A random collection of over 1910 books and audiobooks authored by or about my transgender, intersex sisters, and gender-nonconforming persons all over the world. I read some of them, and I was inspired by some of them. I met some of the authors and heroines, some of them are my best friends, and I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing some of them. If you know of any transgender biography that I have not covered yet, please let me know.
Original title: "Otoko no musume-tachi" 男の娘たち (Man's daughters) by Nao Kawamoto 川本 直.
This book is a non-fiction work called "Man's Daughters" that investigates the scene of cross-dressing culture and gender culture centered on young people. The origin of the publication is Japan's biggest cross-dressing event, attended by cosplay cross-dressing boys, and "closeted" people who live their daily lives as women... Their life histories depict a gradation of diversification and subdivision of the community. It is a fascinating book that required three years of in-depth research.
Nao Kawamoto was born in Tokyo in 1980. His debut novel Julian Butler's True Life (2021) won the 73rd Yomiuri Literature Prize (Best Novel) and the 9th Salmon Children's Literature Prize. His other books include "Men's Daughters" and co-edited "Kenichi Yoshida Again."
2014,
Japanese,
Nao Kawamoto,
Full title: "The Freedom to Be: Stories from Transgender Youth, Adults, and Their Families" by Diana J. Ensign.
"Award-winning author, Diana J. Ensign, practices the art of listening to people who teach us how to love and care for one another on this human journey. Here, transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming teens, adults, and family members voice an urgent call for freedom: The freedom to pursue dreams, to work in meaningful jobs, to be free of hatred and violence, to love one another, and to be who they are.
This book underscores the essential human need for safety, connection, acceptance, and for policies that ensure every family is valued. With these candid and insightful narratives, we learn practical ways that parents, teachers, healthcare providers, neighbors, friends, and allies can create supportive communities for transgender individuals.
2020,
Diana J. Ensign,
English,
"Mi adolescencia trans" (My trans adolescence) is the Spanish language edition of "P. La mia adolescenza trans" (2019) by Fumettibrutti.
Josephine Yole Signorelli tells in this comic her own story as a trans teenager in the first decade of this century, struggling with the transformation of her body in the context of school, family, social life, drugs, prostitution of minors online and, finally, love. A long-awaited visceral autobiography destined to cause debate and leave a mark on the history of comics and trans bibliography.
This comic tells a very powerful and important story, and that Yole's story can make the average reader reflect on a lot of false beliefs that they may have about the trans reality.
2020,
Fumettibrutti,
Josephine Yole Signorelli,
Spanish,
Full title: "The Lady Chablis Quiz Book" by T. Buburuz.
This quiz book focuses on the career and personal life of transgender icon, performer, actress, and author, the Grand Empress herself, The Lady Chablis.
According to Wikipedia, The Lady Chablis (1957-2016), also known as The Grand Empress and The Doll, was an American actress, author, and transgender club performer. Through exposure in the bestselling nonfiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and its 1997 film adaptation, she became one of the first trans performers to be introduced to a wide audience.
2018,
English,
T. Buburuz,
The Lady Chablis,
Original title: "My zdes'. Sbornik trans*istoriy" Мы здесь. Сборник транс*историй (We're here. Collection of trans* stories) by LGBT initiative group "Coming Out".
The collection includes texts of Russian-speaking transgender people and their relatives about various aspects related to gender, transgenderism, transgender transition – and not only. In addition, inside you can find pictures, comics, and poems written by trans* people.
One of the most important tasks of the collection is to present - both to the trans* community itself and to the wider world - a diverse experience of trans* people with all the differences in their perception of the world, personal stories and vision of the phenomenon of transgenderism itself. Some of the texts are essays written by trans* activists, and some of them are stories about personal experiences, excerpts from diaries, memories of childhood, and thoughts about creativity, sexuality, rejection, acceptance, loneliness, and about community.
2017,
LGBT initiative group "Coming Out",
Russian,
Full title: "TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress… and Won!" by Riki Anne Wilchins.
"In the early 1990s, no one talked about transgender people, and no one knew one. We were not on TV or in movies. What formed the visible part of the transcommunity – overwhelmingly white, urban, and middle class – was also overwhelmingly focused on conferences, surgery or hormones and cisgender acceptance. This was still a determinedly non-political population, often in defensive crouch because it was also constantly under attack by the media, police, local legislatures, feminists and even LGB-but-never-T advocates. We were a group that still thought of ourselves as a collection of separate individuals, not a movement."
2017,
English,
Riki Anne Wilchins,
USA,
Original title: "Vera y Victoria" (Vera and Victoria) by Mar Sáez.
Vera confessed to Victoria that she was transsexual the day they kissed for the first time. It was in a park. It did not change anything. For the four years that they were together, they loved each other as they had never loved anyone before.
The book is a visual diary shot between 2012 and 2016 in which the author Mar Sáez portrayed the intimate universe of Vera and Victoria. A universe in which new facets of a relationship as intense as theirs come to the surface. No better or worse than anyone else.
Full title: "The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans Medicine" by Eric Plemons.
"Developed in the United States in the 1980s, facial feminization surgery (FFS) is a set of bone and soft tissue reconstructive surgical procedures intended to feminize the faces of trans-women. While facial surgery was once considered auxiliary to genital surgery, many people now find that these procedures confer distinct benefits according to the different models of sex and gender in which they intervene. Surgeons advertise that FFS not only improves a trans-woman's appearance; it allows her to be recognized as a woman by those who see her."
2017,
English,
Eric Plemons,
USA,
Original title: "Io volevo andare nella foresta. Storie di vita per una sociologia dell'esperienza trans" (I wanted to go to the forest. Life stories for a sociology of trans experience) by Celeste Papuli.
The aim of the book is to turn to those who, through their body, experience the trans condition. For a long time the "expert knowledge" has monopolized the discourses on the subject and also for this reason, through the collection of life stories of trans subjectivity, the book proposes a sociological reflection on the meaning that experience assumes directly for those who tell themselves.
2019,
Celeste Papuli,
Italian,
Full title: "Wrong Body, Wrong Life: Living with Gender Identity Disorder in Ireland" by Sara-Jane Cromwell.
"Wrong Body Wrong Life (2010) is the first book of its kind to be published in Ireland. It addresses the subject of Gender Dysphoria (formally Gender Identity Disorder) and describes the living experience of gender dysphoric people in Ireland.
It has proven to be a truly ground-breaking book in that it is the first to properly inform readers on the true nature of gender dysphoria, the science behind it. The book helps to breakdown the stereotypes that surround those who transition towards their true gender identity."
2010,
English,
Ireland,
Sara-Jane Cromwell,
Original title: "Att våga blomma ut: Att få leva ifred i sin egen identitet är långt ifrån en självklart" (Dare to blossom: Being allowed to live in peace in one's own identity is far from given) by Milla Johansson.
Milla lived with a male identity for 40 years. But something was wrong. At first, it was mostly a longing that she didn't understand. In her younger teens, she began to understand what it was all about and from about the age of 20-25 and up to 40 life became more and more unbearable as she forced herself to live in a male identity while wanting to live as the woman she knew herself as. The male identity that she felt society expected of her.
In the end, the whole world collapsed and she ended up in addiction and a deep quagmire of obsessions, compulsions, and anxiety. Years passed and she toiled every day to get back on her feet. It wasn't until she was admitted to the psychiatric emergency room after attempting to commit suicide that she began to turn around. Today, Milla is a much more prosperous woman who is out lecturing about her journey to help others. She does this alongside her full-time job in electromagnetism at a large company, where she is Milla to all her colleagues. Read about Milla's journey and let yourself be touched.
2019,
Milla Johansson,
Swedish,
Full title: "The Survival of the Transgender Girl" by Ellie Victoria.
"It is my intention to inspire Transgender people to a new level of self-love and self-acceptance. Although everyone can benefit from this awareness, I feel it's more important for those that are told on a daily basis that there is something wrong with them for just being. May every person that feel in some way different find the courage to be who they feel themselves to be without fear or shame."
2018,
Ellie Victoria,
English,
Original title: "Soefies en transgenders: Kinderen van een betere God" (Sufis and transgenders: Children of a better God) by Wilma van der Maten.
Pakistani transgender Inaya applied for political asylum in the Netherlands in 2017 after her father threatened to kill her in an act of 'honor killing'. Both culture and religion do not accept such sinners. Yet in the ancient Indus civilization five thousand years ago there was great respect for transgender women called hijras. They guarded the harems of the Muslim princes (between 1526-1858).
Under colonial British rule, discrimination began. But in the holy tombs of the Sufis, these outcasts are hailed as 'children of Allah'. Transsexuals are closest to the genderless God.
"No one is good or bad. Oh God, bless humanity," wrote Bulleh Shah (1680-1757), one of the greatest Sufis Pakistan ever produced. With his romantic poems and songs, he tried to teach his followers that there is more to life than just your gender.
The Pakistani transgender Inaya applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2017 and received it. Her story is covered in the book.
2018,
Dutch,
Wilma van der Maten,
Full title: "The Female-Impersonators" by Jennie June.
"Originally published in 1922, this was a sequel to the Autobiography of an Androgyne and an account of some of the author's experiences during his six years' career as an instinctive female-impersonator in New York's underworld. It also includes the life stories of his androgyne associates and an outline of his subsequently acquired knowledge of kindred phenomena of human character and psychology."
According to Wikipedia, Jennie June, also known as Ralph Werther and Earl Lind, (1874 - ?) was a Victorian and Edwardian era writer and activist for the rights of people who did not conform to gender and sexual norms.
1922,
Earl Lind,
English,
Jennie June,
Ralph Werther,
Original title: "Eu, travesti: Memórias de Luísa Marilac" (I transvestite: Memories of Luisa Marilac) by Luísa Marilac and Nana Queiroz.
Biography of transvestite and activist Luísa Marilac by Nana Queiroz, author of Prisoners who menstruate. Luísa Marilac was born in Minas Gerais and assumed to be a transvestite at the age of 17.
In addition to the traditional traumas associated with the transition of gender in a conservative and lower-class family, she was stabbed seven times at the age of 16, was a victim of sex trafficking in Europe, prostituted herself, raped and arrested more than once. She went to fame after she went viral on YouTube for a video of herself with the catchphrase "And they said I was in the worst".
2019,
Brazil,
Luísa Marilac,
Nana Queiroz,
Portuguese,
Full title: "Transgressed: Intimate Partner Violence in Transgender Lives" by Xavier L. Guadalupe-Diaz.
"Transgender people face some of the highest rates of violence in the US and around the world, particularly within romantic relationships. In Transgressed, Xavier L. Guadalupe-Diaz offers a ground-breaking examination of intimate partner violence in the lives of transgender people.
Drawing on interviews and written accounts from transgender survivors of intimate partner violence, he sheds much-needed light on the dynamics of abuse that entrap trans partners in violent relationships. Transgressed shows how rigidly gendered discussions of violence have served to marginalize and silence stories of abuse. Ultimately, these stories of survival follow their unique journeys as they navigate - and break free - from the cycle of abuse, providing us with a better understanding of their experiences."
2019,
English,
Xavier L. Guadalupe-Diaz,
"Nella camera oscura" (In The Dark Room) is the Italian language edition of Susan Faludi and Patricia Piolon's bestseller "In the Darkroom".
Let me quote the 2016 article from The New York Times: ""In the Darkroom" is Faludi's rich, arresting and ultimately generous investigation of her father, who died in 2015. It is partly an inquiry into the meaning of gender, a subject Faludi, the famous feminist, sees very differently from Stefánie, who hewed to traditional notions of masculinity and femininity both as an overbearing patriarch and as a coquettish old woman."
"But in trying to understand her inscrutable father — Jewish Holocaust survivor and Leni Riefenstahl fanatic, man and woman, a sly fantasist whose tallest tales turn out to be true — Faludi transcends feminist debate. The book, which traces the decimation of her father's prosperous, assimilated Jewish clan during World War II, his improbable survival and then reinvention in Denmark, Brazil, and America, and his gender metamorphosis at 76, becomes a complex act of forgiveness."
2019,
Italian,
Stefánie Faludi,
Susan Faludi,
Full title: "Histories of the Transgender Child" by Julian Gill-Peterson.
"Beginning with the early 1900s when children with “ambiguous” sex first sought medical attention, to the 1930s when transgender people began to seek out doctors involved in altering children’s sex, to the invention of the category gender, and finally the 1960s and ’70s when, as the field institutionalized, transgender children began to take hormones, change their names, and even access gender confirmation, Julian Gill-Peterson reconstructs the medicalization and racialization of children’s bodies. Throughout, they foreground the racial history of medicine that excludes black and trans of color children through the concept of gender’s plasticity, placing race at the center of their analysis and at the center of transgender studies.
2018,
English,
Julian Gill-Peterson,
USA,
"Io principessa. Storia di Luana, una bambina transgender" (I princess. Story of Luana, a transgender child) is the Italian language edition of "Yo nena, yo princesa: Luana, la niña que eligió su propio nombre" (Me baby, me princess: Luana, the girl who chose her own name) by Gabriela Mansilla.
On May 9, 2012, the Argentine National Congress passed a law on gender identity recognizing the right to identity of transvestites, transsexuals, and transgenders, indicating their female sex. A political-social revolution that has been intertwined with that of Manuel, the Argentine child, who became by law, at the age of six, the youngest transgender in the world with the name of Luana.
This is her story, told in an intimate personal diary, by her mother Gabriela Mansila.
2018,
Argentina,
Gabriela Mansilla,
Italian,
Full title: "Lives in Transition: LGBTQ Serbia" by Slobodan Randjelovic.
"Part of the ongoing series of photobooks published with the Arcus Foundation and Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios on queer communities around the world, a stunning portrait of a community battling homophobia in Serbia.
In June 2001, Serbia witnessed its first gay pride parade in history in Belgrade’s central square. It was a short-lived march, as an ultranationalist mob quickly descended on the participants, chanting homophobic slurs and injuring dozens. For years afterward, fear of violence prevented further marches, and when, in October 2010, the next pride march finally went ahead, it again devolved into violence as anti-gay rioters, firing shots and hurling petrol bombs, fought the police. It was only in 2014 that a pride march was held uninterrupted, albeit under heavy police protection.
2018,
English,
Serbia,
Slobodan Randjelovic,
Original title: "Dolore minimo" (Minimal pain) by Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto.
The "minimal pain" of the title expresses the complex transsexual condition pronounced with great poetic power, aimed at breaking the wall of silent cultural taboo. The young author tells her luminous rebirth with verses, delicate and very deep at the same time, which made Dacia Maraini and Alessandro Fo talk about a literary phenomenon.
"Minimal pain" is not the manifesto of those who have experienced, growing up, "a rebellious detachment from the flesh, / a fratricidal struggle between spirit / and skin." It is the viaticum of anyone who wants to savor a powerful poem that delicately offers the reader a paradigm to orient himself in the infinite, wonderful confusion of existence.
2018,
Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto,
Italian,
Full title: "Becoming Lisa" by Lisa Kelly.
"An inspiring memoir of overcoming fear and living your life in the open. A sincere and honest account of the transition to, and living your life as, your true self. A book about small town homophobia and bullying of those who do not fit in. Becoming Lisa is the incredible emotional roller coaster journey from Dave, a shy boy, bullied throughout his life to becoming Lisa, a strong-willed determined independent woman campaigning against hate and bigotry to help others along their path to living their life as they wish and without fear."
"As Dave, Lisa struggled through School in the 1970s and 1980s Britain, bullied and beaten up because of her looks. She faced the trauma of rape and suicide, eventually having to move away from her home town to escape the bullying she had endured. She started her new life as Lisa, contemplating suicide herself when she was at her lowest point, but then overcoming the huge obstacles that lay in her path to achieving her new identity."
2018,
English,
Lisa Kelly,
UK,
Original title: "Miwa akihiro to iu ikikata" 美輪明宏という生き方 (The Way of Life of Akihiro Miwa) by Junko Mitsuhashi 三橋 順子, Toji Kamada, Ikuko Matsumoto, Angel Yuri, and Nobara Takemoto.
In the 1950s, a beautiful boy dressed in a purple costume suddenly appeared in Ginza. He captivated the audience with his good looks and beautiful voice, causing a stir in the mass media. Who is he? Man? Woman? At that time, there were still not many people who could take hid intense and alien brilliance directly.
Akihiro Miwa, who dramatically sings about those who go crazy in love, mothers who think of their children, and songs that are peaceful, has a wide range of activities to be a singer. A muse of artists, a shaman for the afflicted, a rare stage performer, a writer who laments and encourages the aesthetic poverty of our time. As the times finally begin to catch up, the existence of Akihiro Miwa is illuminated from various angles, and the essence of his/her world and way of life is approached.
2000,
Akihiro Miwa,
Angel Yuri,
Ikuko Matsumoto,
Japanese,
Junko Mitsuhashi,
Nobara Takemoto,
Toji Kamada,
Full title: "The Transvestite and his Wife" by Virginia "Charles" Prince.
We can read on the cover of the book: "Virginia "Charles" Prince is an authority on the subject of transvestism. She has been invited to speak before many service organizations, medical classes and other interested groups, has appeared on several national radio and television broadcasts, and is a prolific writer on the subject of transvestism."
Dallas Denny wrote an interesting article about Virginia Prince - "Heteropocrisy: The Myth of the Heterosexual Male Crossdresser" where she addressed some of the ideas elaborated by Virginia Prince in the book: "Virginia, who is sometimes referred to jokingly by some (and devoutly by others) as The Godmother of Crossdressing, formulated a philosophy which has been carried to the four corners of the world by FPE and its successors, which include The Society for the Second Self (Tri-Ess) in the United States, the Seahorse Clubs of Australia, and the Beaumont Societies in Europe."
1967,
English,
Virginia Prince,
Original title: "AntoloGaia. Vivere sognando e non sognare di vivere: i miei anni Settanta" (AntoloGaia. Living dreaming and not dreaming of living: my seventies) by Porpora Marcasciano.
In 2016, Porpora Marcasciano published the second edition of the book with a slightly different name: "AntoloGaia. Sesso, genere e cultura degli anni '70" (AntoloGaia. Sex, gender and culture of the 70s).
Porpora Marcasciano starts with herself and, through her biography, tells us about the seventies from a special point of observation. Hers is a deviant and scandalous experience, a "continuous crush", made up of manifestations, passions, fears, dreams, and sexuality, in which she crosses many small and large characters, builds the first LGBT communities, the first "pride" and the nascent gay movement, which enters into a relationship with the revolutionary movement of those years pushing it to become aware of itself and its body. A reality in which trans, gays, lesbians, and women revolutionize not only their lives but consequently the whole world.
2015,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Full title: "... mom, I need to be a girl" by Just Evelyn.
"Phyllis Randolph Frye says, "I remember when Just Evelyn contacted me in 1994 or so for legal help for her teenage transsexual child, and I could give her none, other than strategies and role models, to encourage her to push the system to work for her daughter. And push she did.
Just Evelyn's book about her new daughter Danielle will join my personal list of four other books - boiled down after 23 years of out activism that I will recommend to folks like her to read. Actually, this is a must-read for ALL parents of ANY transgendered child of ANY age. It is heartwarming with touches of humor, insight, guidance and things to avoid. It is chatty and very readable.
1998,
English,
Just Evelyn,
Original title: "Paul: eine besondere Frau" (Paul: a special woman) by Brigitte Schneebeli.
Paul Jecklin, born in 1957, grew up partly with a foster family and partly in the Chur orphanage. The guardianship authorities took him away from his parents when he was a small child, as did all his five siblings.
Two things made life even more difficult for the delicate, blond boy. He developed more slowly than other children and... he would rather have been a girl. For both he was laughed at and ridiculed. As a teenager, he spent several years in a home for the 'difficult' youth. Not because he had done anything wrong, but because people wanted to be rid of him.
2000,
Brigitte Schneebeli,
Crossdressing,
German,
Paul Jecklin,
Full title: "Identity: A Story of Transitioning" by Corey Maison.
"Corey Maison was born a girl, trapped in a boy’s body. Growing up, Corey was more interested in dolls than trucks; in dresses than jeans. Everything about Corey was female... except her physicality.
Known as gender dysphoria, this condition is devastating if not acknowledged.
But society is slow to be sympathetic to the idea that a person’s gender is not entirely based on physiology, but instead is fluid, and a combination of emotional and psychological self-awareness along with, or sometimes more importantly, physical characteristics.
2020,
Corey Maison,
English,
